MORAL EDUCATION IN THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE: A bAPTIST CONTRIBUTION ° ROBERT B. KRUSCHWITZ ° Professor of Philosophy Georgetown College The teaching of ethics traditionally has been a primary goal of Christian colleges, judged important both to encourage the moral development of students, and to teach them to integrate and to apply to their lives the knowledge and intellectual skills taught in the various academic disciplines. But whose values should Christian colleges teach? Roman Catholics, Calvinists, Lutherans, Anabaptists, Wesleyans, and Pentecostals historically have emphasized different aspects of the moral life. Should Christian college professors reduce this diversity to a "mere Christian" residue? Or should they, as Arthur Holmes provocatively argues, "draw on the particular ethical emphases of [their college's] own theological tradition while still learning from [other Christian traditions]?"1 Holmes suggestion is attractive to me. Yet what are the distinctive ethical emphases of my own and my college's baptist tradition? Put another way, what would be distinctive about a program of moral education if it were informed by that baptist tradition? After I clarify this question by examining the phrases "a program of moral education" and "the baptist tradition," I will suggest one baptist contribution and explore briefly its implications for curriculum, the extra-curriculum, and the administration of baptist colleges and universities. I. A Program of Moral Education For many Christian educators today the phrase, "a program of moral education," raises the red flag of moral indoctrination, of a teacher "drumming in" controversial moral beliefs without giving students the tools or opportunities to critically evaluate those beliefs. By "a program of moral education," however, I mean character education. There is a key difference between character education and moral indoctrination. We may distinguish (1) moral doctrines, which are beliefs about the moral rightness or wrongness of actions or classes of action, and (2) character traits, which are the moral and intellectual virtues and vices. The old programs of moral indoctrination taught the moral doctrines favored by the school's sponsoring group. There was no allowance for critical discussion of moral doctrines and little attention to character development. The few virtues inculcated were loyalty and personal commitment to the group's favored moral beliefs and the strength of will to act on those beliefs in the face of temptation.2 In the nineteenth century many educators believed moral indoctrination was required in order to advance their sponsoring group's tradition. However moral indoctrination maybe rejected today by Christian educators for several reasons: (1) it violates their commitment to the liberationist, or liberal arts approach to education; (2) in many cases they could afford to employ it only surreptitiously, because its announced use would drive away non-Christian students; and most importantly, (3) it violates the Christian doctrine of the individual's responsibility for his or her moral and religious beliefs. Character education, the other model of moral education, focuses on the inculcation of virtues and the avoidance of vices. It aims at making students "the right sort of people" insofar as this is teachable. Some moral doctrines will be taught along with the virtues-e.g., as we learn to abhor the vice of cruelty, we must believe such uncontroversial doctrines as "Causing unnecessary suffering to innocent people is wrong." But beyond teaching these basic doctrines, professors will teach the required critical skills and encourage students to evaluate competing moral doctrines for truth.3 A program of character education has the advantage of avoiding indoctrination, but can it also faithfully promote a sponsoring tradition? Yes, because a tradition not only will espouse distinctive moral doctrines, it will have a perspective on normative human character-it will endorse some traits as virtues because of the tradition's distinctive control of beliefs about human nature. For instance, I will argue below that the baptist tradition endorses a distinctive account of practical wisdom. A program of character education can be faithful to a tradition if it maintains a non-coercive witness to the tradition's distinctive moral doctrines, control beliefs, and virtues, as it encourages students to examine these critically. II. The Baptist Tradition By "the baptist tradition" I refer very broadly to the "radical reformation" or "free church" tradition which includes the Anabaptists in the 16th century, Quakers and English Baptists in the 17th century, their later descendants in America, as well as the radical pietists, groups called "Brethren," and the Disciples movement. These "baptists" share a vision of the church's relation to society and to its own history: they believe that "historic Christianity has fallen short of faithfulness, and that here is some other criterion (most centrally Scripture) whereby the shape of the Christian life should be reformed."4 Baptists see their common life as a continuation of the New Testament church. Therefore Jesus' teachings and life serve as revealed models of practical wisdom and moral action, and the application of these models for today is discerned by the collective thinking of Jesus' contemporary disciples gathered into the church.5 The radical reformation envisioned by baptists has two foci, says John Howard Yoder: 1) church membership must be voluntary for the individual; and 2) power expressed in violence or the threat of violence must never be used to coerce belief or action. Each focus has ethical implications. The voluntary nature of church membership implies that from the baptist perspective moral philosophy must be confessional. This does not require that baptists intellectually withdraw from the world, deny all human wisdom, or reject concern for the common life of society. Rather, it means that the baptist ideal of community life based on "cross-bearing in the hope of resurrection, enemy-love as reflection of God's love, forgiving as one has been forgiven, [and] behavioral change describable as expressing regeneration or sanctification" does not make sense without appeal to the tradition's commitments.6 The rejection of violence should not be misunderstood as a rejection of all kinds of collective or economic power. Church and government can project non-violent power, as William Penn and Martin Luther King Jr. demonstrated.7 Together these foci imply a rejection of hierarchical, authoritarian governance within the Christian community.8 III. A Baptist Model of Practical Moral Deliberation Out of this rich baptist tradition we might draw several insights for a program of moral education in a baptist college. We might fruitfully examine moral virtues such a peacemaking, forgiveness, and hope. However, I will consider from the baptist perspective an intellectual virtue, practical wisdom-the capacity to morally discern goals for one's life or for institutions-and weigh how best to act on that virtue. Early baptists started from New Testament descriptions of church life-especially 1 Corinthians 14 and Matthew 18:15 ff.-and developed a model of practical moral deliberation consistent with their vision.9 On this model practical wisdom requires the right sort of community: one in which (1) each member is free to speak; (2) each grants to others the privilege of weighing his or her contribution; and (3) each member is committed to reaching an opinion which is consensual, reconciling each member to the others, and compatible with God's judgment. How does this "apostolic moral reasoning" work? John Howard Yoder fleshes out the process by describing key functions which members of the community may perform at various times: prophecy, scribal memory, teaching, and shepherding.10 Assignment of these roles was fluid in the New Testament, but today we tend to professionalize these functions, routing them through offices occupied by specially trained individuals. Perhaps this division of labor is necessary or wise in our culture, provided it does not reintroduce an authoritarian hierarchy which overrides the community's deliberation. But I will ignore these issues of distribution here in order to focus on the functions themselves. The first function is "direction" or "prophecy." The prophet does not announce specific moral guidance, contrary to what a divine command theory of ethics might suggest. Rather the prophetic voice "states and reinforces a vision of the place of the believing community in history." This leading by God prevents the process from being arbitrary, or the mere following of tradition; yet it also makes the process situational, for God's revealed role for the church may adjust to historical circumstances. The second function is "communal memory" or "scribal memory." "The scribe as practical moral reasoner does not judge or decide anything, but he (or she) remembers expertly, charismatically the store of memorable, identity-confirming acts of faithfulness praised and of failure repented." The scribe draws on resources in Scripture, communal history, and worship to keep the deliberation true to the community's character, and thus provides "the necessary corrective to any purely occasionalistic ethic." The "teacher" as guardian of the "tongue" or language (James 3:18) performs a third function as "agent of linguistic self-consciousness." Rhetorical skills can misguide debate, even to avoiding conclusion and action; unanalyzed conceptual schemes can steer thinking into confusion or superficial closure. The teacher guards the community's discourse from the careless misuses of language. "Shepherd," "elder" and "bishop" roughly refer to a single group (they usually appear in the plural in New Testament churches) whose role is to ensure order and due process in deliberation. They are moderators or facilitators, not monarchs, guaranteeing that everyone is heard and that conclusions are genuinely consensual. The baptist model, then, is that "the right sort of community" aims at consensus on moral decisions, guided by a sense of shared purpose, by communal memory of past deliberations, by a healthy concern for action over debate and for correctness over agreement, and by fairness through due process. What are the advantages of this model of moral deliberation? First, it avoids the moral anarchy of "individualistic moral intuitionism" (Yoder's term). This model faithfully reflects the individual's need for moral counsel: it requires one to seek the right sort of community to weight one's opinions, correct one's biases, and enlarge one's moral sensitivities. Second, this model avoids the "inauthentic morality of conformity" produced by following an authoritarian establishment (in the radical reformers' day the Roman Catholic or state-sponsored Protestant churches; in ours, the "conformity produced by the schools, the job market, and the media").11 It provides a social group for moral debate and guidance, but substitutes a voluntary community for the total society or influential power groups. Were it not for the freedom of choice in associating with the community, an individualist might think this model tyrannical. Finally, this model does not reduce the individual to a cipher, as do modern alternatives offered by utilitarians, Kantians, and ideal contract theorists. These modern theorists steer between individualism and group-think by morally denuding the individual. They say moral deliberation may proceed only after subtraction: of our individual or community-specific desires (Rawlsians), or of every personal or communal motivation except respect for duty (Kantians) or desire for the greatest good (utilitarians). Each theory accuses the others of subtracting the wrong thing. My point is that each modern theory totally eliminates the need for corporate 8 debate: after successful subtraction, the individual may proceed through Rails' original position alone, or judge from Cant's or Mills' privileged perspectives by him or herself. The baptist model is more concrete, respecting "the corporate dimension in all human nature" in its process. It overcomes the individual's limited perspective and group-think not by subtraction, but by addition through voluntary association with others' insight, encouragement, and need for reconciliation. After thinking about these modern alternatives someone might object that the baptist model seems parochial: it might work in church, but if used a general model for moral reflection, it is merely a social contract theory without even minimum moral limits on deliberation. In other words, outside of a church directed by God's prophet, this process merely celebrates free association with any chosen group-think, no matter how immoral. This objection raises many issues which I cannot deal with here, but let me say briefly why I believe the objection is based on a false dilemma. We can escape the dilemma posed if we show how the key functions in the baptist model are transferable beyond the church setting. Scribal memory, teaching, and shepherding functions are not problematic, for these have obvious analogs in any group. But outside the church what is analogous to the prophetic function? Is it merely a "prophetic" reminder of group-relative goals? If so, the deliberation process is only as moral as those goals (imagine a Mafia family adapting the model, complete with 9 its Mafia "prophet")! But this last question misunderstands the baptist vision. There is no need for a prophet-analog; the prophet him or herself must be transferred. Because God's purposes extend beyond churches to friendships, families, corporations, and institutions, the prophet's contribution may be tailored to express God's purposes within each specific setting.12 And the input of God's purposes through God's prophet is the normative control on the deliberative process. IV. Some Practical Implications What are the practical implications of this account of moral deliberation for a program of moral education in a baptist college or university? I will sketch some implications for the curriculum, the extra-curriculum, and administration. In the appropriate classes the baptist model of practical moral deliberation should be clarified, compared to alternatives (ancient and modern), and critically examined. Courses in baptist history or church history are obvious choices, but relatively few students take these. It is appropriate to bring wider exposure to the model through general education courses in ethics, Western culture, or Western history. Ethics professors might present the baptist model in a unit on intellectual virtues if they take the virtue-theoretic approach; or compare it to Kantian, utilitarian, and social contract models when they focus on either modern philosophical theories or practical moral dilemmas. Historians and philosophers might use it to 10 illumine features of Aristotle's phronesis, to examine medieval debates of faith and reason, or to give perspectives on Enlightenment moral theory. Unfortunately, reading assignments on the baptist model might be difficult to make, since scholarly discussion of the model is rare, and not accessible to lower-division undergraduates. More important, perhaps, is all faculty at a baptist college allowing the model to inform their "hidden curriculum"-those manners or character traits they inculcate by the way they teach their subjects. A wealth of pedagogical ideas based on this model may be found in Parker J. Palmer's remarkable book, To Know As We Are Known: A Spirituality of Education (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1983). Palmer shows how to introduce cooperative learning and consensual governance into the college classroom. He calls such a classroom "spacious": simultaneously "open" to reduce everyone's fear of revealing one's ignorance; "unbounded" to focus the class on the subject to be mastered; and "hospitable" to strange learners and ideas, in order to expose ignorance, test tentative hypotheses, challenge false or partial information, and criticize one another's thought. In spacious classrooms: 1) Seating is arranged to promote interaction; 2) Assigned "texts" are short, focused, and chosen to provoke questions;13 3) Lectures do not have "too many words" or answers; 4) Dramatic tension is introduced through rules like, "We are interested in truth, 11 regardless of whether this or that author writes it, you and I say it"; 5) Silence encourages deeper reflection and wider participation (Palmer suggests silence at the beginning of class, during class, or spread about with rules like, "Do not speak more than twice-three times in an emergency-during a session"); 6) Small groups modeled on the Quaker "clearness committee" encourage self- discovery and appropriation of truth-e.g., small groups might follow these rules: one person raises a problem for discussion in writing; others may not offer solutions, but may respond with questions; the first person responds with proposed solutions; and 7) Emotional reactions to material are identified and shared in a class introduction or in a short debriefing period at the end of the session.14 The baptist model invites students to join a community of learners in which each participate has a contribution to make. The baptist model also should inform the "hidden extra-curriculum," to invent a term for those character traits which we inculcate by the way we organize extra-curricular clubs and events. The extra-curriculum at a baptist college should focus on building community. Large, campus-wide meetings and events tend to be impersonal and to involve only a handful of aggressive students in planning and performance. Community is practiced best in small, interest-targeted groups which are student-governed. 12 In these groups every member's contribution is needed and consensual governance is possible. Faculty might plant, tend, and encourage such groups by generously sharing their academic, spiritual, and hobby interests with students. Finally the baptist model should inform the most pervasive, hidden teaching element on the campus, the administration. From bottom to top (or better, form side to side) the college or university administration should be an interlocking system of units of consensual governance. This is an ideal, and it is not an impossible goal. Some "free church" colleges practice consensual governance and they flourish. They are faithful to the baptist tradition, and reap additional benefits in community-spirit and joint-ownership of goals and strategies. To the objection that "Some decisions are not made best consensually," the reply is obvious. Of course some decisions are made best by experts, on the spot and quickly. But which decisions? This meta-decision is best made by the community in consensual agreement; the community best determines goals and strategies, and distributes specialized tasks to its members. Perhaps change is in the air within my own Southern Baptist tradition. Recently ten Southern Baptist colleges and universities, recognizing "that they are not in a seller's market" and desiring to improve "both management 13 methods and the product of the institution," sent representatives to explore adapting W. Edwards Deming's management methods to higher education.15 The Deming method is more radical than the academic-consensus management style which these institutions abandoned after the 19th century: the academic model involved just the faculty in decisions. Southern Baptist leadership, wandering "in the far country" of American business, is beginning to listen to a prophet who speaks the counsel of their own tradition. What would be distinctive about a program of moral education if it were informed by the baptist tradition? It would elucidate and criticize the baptist model of moral reflection, and it would inculcate practical wisdom, as understood from the baptist perspective. What role would I and my fellow baptist professors play? We would strive not to be philosopher-kings, but to clarify our baptist tradition so that one day we may work in institutions which need no kings.16 References 1Arthur F. Holmes, Shaping Character: Moral Education in the Christian College (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1991), p. 14. 2For a well-developed, secular version of the moral indoctrination approach, see Émile Durkheim, L'Éducation Morale (Paris, 1925), trans. by Herman Schnurer and Everett K. Wilson, ed., as Moral Education (Boston: Free Press, 1961). 3Two recent explanations of the character education approach are Edmund L. Pincoff's "On Becoming the Right Sort," in Quandaries and Virtures: Against Reductivism in Ethics (Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 1986), pp. 150-74; and Richard W. Pau, "Ethics Without Indoctrination," Educational Leadership (May 1988): 10-19. 4John Howard Yoder, "Radical Reformation Ethics in Ecumenical Perspective," in The Priestly Kingdom: Social Ethics as Gospel (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), p. 106. 5Ibid., pp. 116-8. 6Ibid., p. 110. 14 7Ibid., pp. 115-6. 8Arthur F. Holmes claims "Anabaptist theology" severely limits philosophical reflection on morality: "Philosophical thinking can critique secular theories, teach logical reasoning, and nurture conceptual clarity, but it is not itself a source of moral guidance to Scripture . . . ." See Shaping Character: Moral Education in the Christian College (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1991), pp. 16-7. For a criticism of this limiting interpretation of the baptist tradition, see Yoder, op. cit. 9Yoder, "Radical," p. 118. 10In the next few paragraphs I follow John Howard Yoder's account of "apostolic moral reasoning." See "The Hermeneutics of Peoplehood," in The Priestly Kingdom: Social Ethics as Gospel (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), pp. 28-34. 11Yoder, "Hermeneutics," p. 26. 12Another response to this objection might be to substitute for the prophet-function an objective, normative standard of morality-e.g., drawn from the account of human nature in the Aristotelian tradition. The resulting model would be consensus-based, but not group-relative. 13For examples of his use of brief "texts" see Parker J. Palmer, The Active Life: A Spirituality of Work, Creativity, and Caring (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1989). 14Parker J. Palmer, To Know As We Are Known: A Spirituality of Education (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1983), pp. 74-87. 15Arthur L. Walker Jr., "Applying the Deming Method," The Southern Baptist Educator 56 (June/July 1991): 15-6. Also see "Deming Method Adaptable to Educational Administration, The Southern Baptist Educator 56 (June/July 1991): 6. 16I appreciate the criticism and encouragement of those members of the Baptist Association of Philosophy Teachers who evaluated a version of this paper in November 1991. 15